The development of the Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) has allowed telephone companies to offer various services that were heretofore difficult and expensive to develop. A variety of new services are possible by using the infrastructure of the AIN, including the ability to provide custom services to a subscriber at different locations.
The AIN architecture is dependent on network databases called Service Control Points (SCP) that store data and programs used to control various switching structures in the telephone network. Originally, the design of the AIN anticipated that the SCPs would be flexible to meet future needs, and to a large extent that has occurred. Because the SCPs are critical in providing enhanced services, the architecture was designed with redundancy. However, the SCPs are specialized processors, and fairly expensive relative to other types of processing equipment. Over time, the SCPs were required to interface with other types of databases and data centers. One rationale for interfacing SCPs with other databases was that this would allow less expensive data processing equipment to be used, as well as providing further flexibility and reduced costs. However, access to these databases and datacenters by the SCPs was not designed within the AIN architecture, and hence the robust reliability mechanisms were not readily applicable to the SCP-to-database/data center portion of the network. Thus, there is a need for flexible mechanisms to provide greater reliability and control in regard to the SCP accessing various databases and datacenters.